Thursday, March 25, 2010

Warped and Pieced - Return to Huncoat (Part 3)

Back in July 2009 I wrote a piece about the graff co-existing with the rubble of the old Huncoat Power Station in Lancashire. Join me for the final return visit and a visual ride into them thar hills...

The disused power station at Huncoat (between Accrington and Burnley) is easily the best hidden graff den I’ve ever been to. Rubble and crud are everywhere, right next to stunning pieces from the Trans Pennine Nomads (TPN) crew (and a few others). A visual overload; you don’t know where to look (actually I do know where to look….. look up for graffiti… and look down for that pit full of glass and old shoes that you are about to fall into you spanner….).

In February I finally summoned up some enthusiasm to get out of Manchester and bob back up to Huncoat (see part 2 of this blog). Due to the snow and my own internal GPS system going strangely loco [Pryme later described it as a “schoolboy error” - lol], I didn’t manage to get down to the other spot, so I went back a week later after arranging to hook up with the fabulous Mr Pryme himself.

Pryme had been painting with TeaOne from Preston (check out TeaOne on flickr) the day before, and he wanted to finish off his own piece, so we yakked whilst he tried to perfect his side of the wall.

TeaOne's piece.....

Pryme in action.....

I probably put Pryme off, because he ended up not liking it and going over it a few days later with a chrome and black number (watch out for a 'Chrome & Black' blog coming soon-ish...)

We then went off to the other spot where back in brassic January Pryme had been doing a lot of work with Burnley writer, Slack - a name I previously didn‘t know. Yes, these pieces (and they genuinely can be called masterpeices!) were all being done outside in the coldest winter for years, when many writers are still hibernating! :-)

The whole wall looks great, including this first piece, the most ‘traditional’ of the three, and one that looks extra sweet when cropped down to just the wall itself.

Everyone loves a good chrome and black don’t they (it’s like a friend who makes you smile, or a musician that makes you gasp; it‘s the comfort blanket of graff…) and this is one of the best I’ve seen, with a really effective idea of having two cut-outs of how a colour piece would look.

And last but definitely not least, this peel-back style had writers everywhere wondering why they hadn’t thought of that before.... Genius!!